You’ll often hear me talking about ‘wifi-on browsing time’ when I talk about battery life on UMPCs. Its a reference point I use because its 1) a common scenario and 2) A fairly heavy drain on battery life. In some cases the Wifi accounts for 20% of the battery drain. For example, the Vye V37 that I recently tested is a 2-hour device with the Wifi on but goes to 2.5 hours with WiFi off.
Atheros obviously know about this problem
and have just released the AR6002 to address it. Its a low-power Wifi chip that uses, and I find this very cool indeed, near-zero power on standby which means you can leave it on all the time. Due for early 2008, it brings the sub-4W umpc closer to reality.
More details at LinuxDevices
Tags: umpc, wifi
